Bid to End the Manhattan Mayoralty

For nearly 40 years, City Hall has seen a steady rotation of mayors of different backgrounds, philosophies and approaches. But they all had at least one thing in common: Manhattan.

There hasn't been a New York City mayor elected from outside Manhattan since Brooklyn-based Abraham Beame, who became mayor in 1974 and was sworn in at his vacation home in Queens.

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Public Advocate Bill De Blasio
PictureGroup/Associated Press

As New Yorkers prepare to elect a successor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Massachusetts native who has lived in Manhattan since 1966, some likely candidates are including geographic diversity among their selling points.

"If people have not experienced life in the outer boroughs, they will be less sensitive to the outer boroughs, they will be less understanding of what the outer boroughs need," said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who lives in Brooklyn with his family and is mulling a run for mayor.

Among those eyeing a mayoral bid, only Mr. de Blasio and city Comptroller John Liu, of Queens, live outside Manhattan.

Former city Comptroller Bill Thompson, who narrowly lost to Mr. Bloomberg in 2009, was born in Brooklyn and spent most of his adult life there. Now he lives in Harlem and jokes about his "dual citizenship."

The other possible contenders all live in Manhattan, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and media executive Tom Allon.

Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy at Fordham University, said Manhattan contenders may be helped by the borough's wealth and image as the city's center. But, he said, "I'm not so convinced that something sinister is going on here to prevent Gracie Mansion from being occupied from somebody outside Manhattan."

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It may just be the case that the "best candidates have been from Manhattan," he said.

Still, the lopsided string of mayoral victories by Manhattan residents has led to grumbling—fair or not—that the less-glamorous boroughs get short shrift.

A Quinnipiac poll from March 2011 showed 70% believed Mr. Bloomberg favors Manhattan over the other boroughs, while 22% believed he gave all areas of the city equal attention.

"People just don't feel that they're being treated as fairly across the city of New York in each borough as they should be," Mr. Thompson said.

Mr. Liu, who described Queens as the city's "most diverse" borough, concurred. "Recent mayors have been overly Manhattan-centric, overly attentive to projects and issues in Manhattan," he said.

Mr. de Blasio said the Manhattan focus has been especially acute in Mr. Bloomberg's third term. He cited the poor response to the December 2010 blizzard, which hit boroughs outside Manhattan hardest. He said the "worst instances" of proposed school closings and "poorly designed" co-locating of schools have been outside Manhattan.

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for the mayor, said the mayor's policies on economic development, affordable housing and solid waste have each helped people who live outside Manhattan.

"The mayor led the charge in Albany to pass a law that will provide taxi service outside of Manhattan, and he teamed up with Speaker Quinn to provide ferry service to the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront," Mr. Loeser said. "On issue after issue, our administration has improved the lives of all New Yorkers."

Former Mayor Ed Koch, a Manhattan stalwart who was born in the Bronx and spent part of his childhood in Newark, said he "resents" efforts to pit New Yorker against New Yorker.

It's "absolute stupidity to talk about where the mayor was living or born," Mr. Koch said. "Stupidity!"

Mr. Stringer, a Washington Heights native who now lives on the Upper West Side, also said the Bloomberg administration has been "Manhattan-centric," especially on transportation.

"[But] voters are very smart—it's not where you get your mail or where you sleep at night," he said. "It's do you have a vision for a five-borough transportation plan? Do you have a record on environmental justice and the economy that speaks to all of the middle-income working families of the city?"

Ms. Quinn said it doesn't matter whether she agrees with people who believe City Hall has focused on Manhattan too much. The idea, she said, "is something I have to respond to," she said.

A Quinnipiac poll from last month shows Ms. Quinn leads potential mayoral candidates, even in the boroughs outside Manhattan. In Brooklyn, Ms. Quinn has 20%, compared with 13% for Mr. Thompson and 11% for Mr. de Blasio. In Queens, she has 27%, while Mr. Liu gets 8%.

No matter where they live, the 2013 mayoral candidates all will be talking about the entire city on the campaign trail. A few, though, will be hoping their residency gives them an edge.

"I just have a very different sense of where the center of gravity is," Mr. de Blasio said. "To me, the center of gravity is where the population of this city is—and that's the outer boroughs."

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